When you get out of high-school, stop living off of your parents and start really supporting yourself I suspect your opinion of this will change drastically ...

While it can be argued that becoming one of the super-rich is due to factors that are outside of the control of the vast majority of people, getting to the $100,000+ income range for an individual or household is really just a matter of working hard, making sacrifices, and making decisions where your career/income are a major consideration. It is completely within reach of people who are willing to try for it ...

All a rule like this would do is punish those individuals who got an education that is valued, work long hard hours to create the products and services that people use, and made the hard choice of long term prosperity over immediate gratification

That's sorta like asking the government to make a sandwhich without bread.

Aside from which,

A) giving money to indiviudals who specialize in aiding others is one of the two options he specifically mentioned there.

B) Those who speicalize in aiding others more often then not actually need a lot of unskilled labor to get them through.

And the best way for that to happen is to have a lot of capital available to invest in non-profit and charitable organizations. As Kasz has said, you additionally need a lot of unskilled volunteer labor to do a lot of work for charities. In the case of government welfare, these people are paid $25+/hr between wages and benefits. With private charities, the labor is usually donated.

Here's an anecdotal story for you from my time working with a private charity. My church founded a food pantry, because one of the ladies had retired and wanted to make it the rest of her life's work to help those who wanted/needed food. She donated her time along with many others that helped out once or twice a week (including myself). The church paid all bills associated with the pantry - about $500/mo.

From that $500/mo plus volunteer work, the pantry fed about 800 people a month with food from the local food bank. Comparatively, our local government food authority fed about 1/2 as many people on a budget well over $20,000/mo. So we were doing twice the work on 1/40th the budget. Why? About 10 people donated 5 hours of work a week, and one person donated 20 hours of work a week.

Additionally, the current church I am at has a clothing center, food pantry, and homeless shelter. They are doing almost as much work as the entire government welfare agency in my county in those areas. The government entity gets about $50,000/mo for said activities. The shelter's total expenses for all three areas is about $3,000/mo. So again, that private charity is doing the same amount of work for about 1/20th the cost because its mostly volunteer work and the overhead is minimal.

More of this type of activity is desireable. How do you encourage it? Drop tax rates for all people to free up capital, and reform regulations to ensure charities can continue work unabated.

Of course, in a market economy, there would be far less taxes to people. Schools are funded by property taxes which drastically increase the cost of rents for the poor and needy. Additionally, if you free up payroll and other government taxes due to less welfare spending by the government, then the poor and needy would have the funds they need to send their kids to school.

Additionally, that doesn't bring up the issue of scholarships - you know, how kids go to college that can't afford it or can't get aid. Many private schools do have scholarships to help people out. Freeing up more capital among all people would fund more scholarships to ensure that kids can go to school. In the end, you'd hav more effective schools, since private schools yield much better results than public schools.

How do markets handle an area of need without money in it?

I actually messed up a little bit - I meant to say $200,000. I actually hate the higher taxes in place in the UK - my household falls into the higher rate (40%), and it actually works out worse than if my father was in a job that paid £20,000 less - either way, I accept that it's a good thing for the economy, and it makes no sense why the richer americans get let off so lightly

If you hate your higher taxes, then why are you arguing for them for Americans?

It's not a matter of 'getting off so lightly'. Our actual tax rate for the wealthiest is 38%. Additionally, tax rates are entirely pertinent to what your government provides. For example, your postal system is horrendously inefficient and costs a lot of taxpayer money. You are paying higher taxes for less work. Comparatively, we are not - at least in that area.

The argument shouldn't be for higher taxes, but an honest discussion about what taxes should pay for, then decide exactly what kind of taxes are needed to pay for said services. As I've said earlier, there was a time in America and the UK that almost no one paid taxes, because the government simply engaged in the very basic needs for people. We should address the question of if that was beneficial or not.

This discussion is occurring all the time, but like so many financial matters, the democratic process prevents a clear answer from being either gained or acted upon with any sort of totality. I doubt not that surgical deregulation could benefit, just as a sort of big-picture keynesian system or even an enduring socialist one could be effective, but no-one has the discipline to follow through on any plans. Deregulation is applied like a hammer rather than a scalpel, keynesianism just increases the debt load at the worst of times, and socialism is mired down in croneyism

The Government shouldn't collect taxes at all. Taxation is theft.

only idiots pay 50% of their taxes to govts in highly taxed countries.

Most of those people invest their income into retirement plans and other things that allows you to defer taxes or make more money tax free.